It really wasn't supposed to be the actual site design, but rather a temp theme to be cleaned up and spiffed up a bit. 18 or 20 months later (I actually don't know exactly how much later) I finally got around to replacing it.

It's certainly different. Cleaner. Simpler. Too simple?

I'd started on this new design several months ago, but left the theme half-done in order to focus on client work. Finally I just had to spend a weekend tinkering with it to get it live on the site.

As I write this, it's still not "officially" released yet, but I've just installed Firefox 2.0 after downloading it from the Mozilla FTP site (Mac versions here), and I'm loving it. I've not yet explored the preferences and all that, but so far nearly all of my extensions still work, including the web developer tools, Performancing and weather.

And so far no websites are breaking. Aren't web standards wonderful? I'm good to go. I can keep working (or writing this blog post), and not have to fret about mysterious problems.

But just wait until websites start breaking. Internet Explorer has always required non-web-standard hacks. The net effect of this has been my thumbnail estimate of 30-40% of loss of productivity in the web design field while developers work around Microsoft's "we don't need no stinkin' standards" attitude and break out the duct tape and chewing gum to make sites that work in every other browser work in IE.

IE7 honors some more web standards, but still has its own quirks -- some new ones, apparently.

I just went and did it: a little css reboot. I just couldn't take the drab look of this place any more. Really, the old theme was an embarrassment. My apologies are offered in advance to those of you on dial-up for whom this page will take some 40 seconds or so to load fully. The graphics should all be there by the time you finish reading this post -- Evelyn Wood graduates excepted.

The theme is powered by phpTemplate. (I'm still running Drupal 4.6 here.) The photograph is mine, shot in Colorado. There are more where that came from on my photoblog.

If you haven't been running one of the release candidates already, you may want to get the latest and perhaps best browser to date, Firefox 1.5, now that it's been officially released. And really, if you're using another browser -- especially the buggy and unsafe Internet Explorer -- you owe it to yourself to at least try Firefox, which is safer for your machine.

That's reason one.

As a designer, Firefox is a pleasurable development in the online world. I can't speak for others, but I think websites look better in Firefox. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer, thanks to Microsoft's defiance of web standards, continues to be a nightmare for web designers who waste additional hours upon hours to hack all the Internet Explorer quirks in CSS so that IE doesn't break the website altogether.

I've read about it. I've talked about it. I've thought about it (a lot). But now I thought I'd just do it. So I went through the page template, ripped out the tables and wrapped everything in divs, dropped some position settings in the stylesheet, moved the main content up top to load first, and here it is.

It's not too pretty yet, but hey, I did it in a half hour. I'll polish it and get the margins right, maybe add some graphics. I haven't had a chance to put stylus to pad yet. In fact my new WACOM pad is some 6 weeks old now and I've hardly touched it, thanks to my most-uncooperative back, so I'll probably do the mouse thing, which is much more familiar to me, anyway, despite the theoretical limitations.

And so far I've left a lot of extra garbage in the templates and css files. I'd be more tidy, but I've been busy working on the site plan for a major community site (to be announced on the web design site) and a proposal for a robust non-profit site, and that leaves a little blogging time, here and elsewhere, and some selfish reclusive indulgence time reading The Da Vinci Code.